A statue of King Kamehameha I in O'ahu, Honolulu, Hawai'i. Photographed May 22, 2010. (Flickr / Wally Gobetz)

I learned about the continuing existence of the Hawaiian Kingdom in a roundabout way through an interest in nuclear disarmament and the protests against U.S. military bases in Okinawa.

Hawai'i's history and its unresolved status as an occupied nation reveal a deeply ironic contradiction in America's imperial project. The numerous American bases located around the Pacific Rim were permitted through treaties and Status of Forces agreements with foreign countries, but the hub of all these outposts is the Pacific Command in Hawai'i—the one place where the American presence has no basis in international law because the islands were unilaterally annexed and there has never been a proper treaty that would allow the foreign military presence.

Hawai'i's problematic status forces Americans to face some fundamental questions about their government’s attitude toward international law. What will be the consequences of having so often ignored international law from an

War Against Rape poster. The NGO works to end rape in Pakistan and worldwide.

In my interview with Nabila Qureshey, Director of the GEP Project at War Against Rape (WAR) in Karachi, Pakistan. I talked to her about Islamic, women rights, and about how to struggle for a rape free society. Education and awareness campaigns are the main weapon we have at our disposal to reduce and end rape in Muslim societies like Pakistan. We have to change our mentality as society.

Milena Rampoldi, ProMosaik: ProMosaik is convinced that Islam is a women-friendly society, and that in Muslim societies we need education to Islamic women rights. What do you think about it?

Nabila Qureshey, WAR: The most common stereotype associated with Islam is that it is a religion that suppresses and oppresses women. With all the bad press Islam gets people have developed the idea that it is somehow a male dominated religion that considers women as only objects and subjects that are under the control of a man.

Islam is a woman friendly religion and was one of the first to give rights to women, which they never had.

The recent repackaging of Syrian al-Qaida affiliate from Jabhat al-Nusra to Jabhat Fatah al-Sham has hoodwinked very few people.

The Americans, who blacklisted Nusra back in 2012 and are widely and practically sympathetic to the Syrian Islamist insurrection against the government of President Bashar al-Assad, have refused to accept there is anything substantial in the name change besides different labeling.

Taking a step back, the name “al-Qaida” itself has indefinite and opaque origins but the leaders and individuals who came to personify “al-Qaida,” especially after the atrocities in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, emanated in an Islamist insurgency which had considerable support from the West. Specifically, the Afghan war in the 1980s which pitted the old Soviet Union against Islamist jihadis was where many of al-Qaida’s future operatives and leaders learned their bombastic trade.

After Donald Trump’s election, 4chan declared war on queer people and the American counterculture.

4chan is a lawless, unmoderated and completely anonymous online forum that frequently serves as a hub of internet troll culture. 4chan helped to spawn the Anonymous movement when some of 4chan’s users launched an organized trolling campaign against the Church of Scientology in 2008. That movement later became known for its hacktivism against the wealthy and powerful during the Occupy Wall Street movement that began in fall of 2011.

In recent years, however, the board, especially a subsection called /pol/ have come to be dominated by a hyper-conservative, white nationalist movement. The users believe, with an almost religious fervor, that their “meme magic” helped to elect Trump. More sober analysts are worried that 4chan and Reddit are helping to radicalize a generation by turning disaffected young white men into dangerous neo-Nazis.

Since November 8, 4chan has been linked to two seemingly disparate, but ultimately interconnected stories.

On the day that you read this article, 200 species of life on Earth (plants, birds, animals, fish, amphibians, insects, reptiles) will cease to exist. Tomorrow, another 200 species will vanish forever.

The human onslaught to destroy life on Earth is unprecedented in Earth’s history. Planet Earth is now experiencing its sixth mass extinction event and Homo sapiens sapiens is the cause. Moreover, this mass extinction event is accelerating and is so comprehensive in its impact that the piecemeal measures being taken by the United Nations, international agencies and governments constitute a tokenism that is breathtaking in the extreme.

And it is no longer the case that mainly ‘invisible’ species are vanishing: those insects, amphibians and small animals about which you had never even heard, assuming they have been identified and given a name by humans.

We are now entering the “Trumperium,” a sinister, unethical and amoral wasteland, where a kleptocrat and his cronies from around the world, will be allowed to cavort among the ruins of every value that progressive politics have always held dear.

The “upside” of all of this, if you could call it that, the “lemonade from lemons,” is that progressive Americans now have a chance facing the Trumperium to create a vibrant, “take it to the streets” left like the one that accompanied Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and resisted the war in Vietnam, or like the one that energized Roosevelt’s New Deal.

The question being, who are going to be the “Freedom Riders,” or the Panthers? Who is going to write and sing the fighting songs, now that Bob Dylan has won the Nobel Prize? What will the be the “We Shall Overcome” of the anti-Trumperium underground?